Call of the Cougar (Heart of the Cougar Book 2) (21 page)

Hal shook Jack Whittington's hand, but before he could offer his hand to Tracey's sister, Jessie, he got a big hug. He hoped Tracey wasn't scowling about the intimacy. He couldn't believe how much the two women looked alike. Though they were different in small ways and definitely they had dissimilar scents, so he would never get them mixed up that way. But their voices too, were very similar. He could see where someone else would think they were the same woman. No matter what, he wasn't interested in Tracey's sister.

The dad was blond-haired, though his hair was starting to gray, but he had the same color of green eyes as Tracey. Jessie's were more amber, and her hair a darker blond. The dad was looking him over as if measuring him for the job of bodyguard. Maybe for more.

Jessie was smiling at him like Tracey had won a prize.

"You're not here to offer to protect Tracey," Jack said, his eyes spearing him, telling him to speak the truth in the matter.

"I couldn't let her come here all alone. Not after all that's happened to her recently."

Jack smiled. "Like I said. You have more of an interest in this than just protecting her."

Tracey said, "Dad, if you keep badgering him, he's going to want to leave."

"Is that right, son?" Jack asked.

Hal caught Tracey's eye, and she looked uncomfortable. Hal smiled at her, not bothered in the least by her father's comments. In fact, he appreciated his frankness. "I think you know the answer to that."

Jack slapped him on the back as though they were good friends, gave a thumbs up to a man sitting in a black car curbside, and then followed Tracey and Jessie into the house. "Mom's baking a cake, crucial stage, and so she couldn't leave the kitchen to greet you."

"And Stan is at a crucial stage in his game and couldn't break free," Jessie explained.

Jack snorted. "The only time he can leave that blasted game is to join us for meals."

"Dad, you're not investigating this business having to do with me, are you?" Tracey asked, joining her mom in the kitchen.

Her mother had blond hair, even lighter than both girls' hair, but her eyes were more of a blue-green. She quickly set the cake pan in the sink and took in Hal's appearance.

"So glad to see you home." Melanie gave Tracey a hug. "Though I wish the circumstances for your visit were different." She considered Hal again. "He looks like he doesn't eat donuts or he works them off."

"I work them off, ma'am," Hal said, patting his belly and smiling at Tracey, who blushed beautifully.

So did Jessie.

Tracey promptly changed the subject. "Dad, you didn't answer me."

"Of course, we're looking into the case. The agency needs every good man it's got to investigate it."

"You're not with the agency any longer."

"I'm not dead either. And this involves both my girls. I'm not keeping my nose out of it. Any more than you are. You can't seriously believe the other guys would, either. So exactly what are we looking at here?"

"We are not looking at anything here." Tracey began washing the cake pan.

Everyone watched her for a moment as if they expected her to change her mind. Then Jack turned to Hal. "So, like I said, you have no intention of just guarding my daughter. You want to solve this case every bit as much as we all do. You and I can discuss it while Melanie brings us some sandwiches and such."

Hal considered the ladies' response to that and Jack smiled. "My wife and Jessie had it all planned out for when you arrived. Tomorrow, you and I get to grill ribs. Not sure about the gamer in there."

"He'll help, Dad, if he comes back tomorrow to join us." Jessie kissed him on the cheeks. "Or he won't get to eat any."

"Good." Jack grabbed a couple of beers and offered one to Hal. "This all right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Call me Jack, if you don't mind. We're on the same team."

"Do you need my help with this," Tracey asked her mother, motioning to the cooling cake.

"No. Go discuss this situation with Hal and your father. And keep your father and his friends out of trouble."

"All right. Thanks." She gave her a hug and raised a brow at Jessie.

"Good with me."

"We'll need to see those photos you took."

Jessie waved in the direction of the other room where her father and Hal had taken seats. "On the laptop in the living room. Dad's got it all set up for you to search through. I looked at the photos, but didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Then again, I wouldn't know what you're looking for exactly, so maybe you'll find something."

"Okay, thanks."

From the loveseat where he was sitting in the living room, Hal watched Tracey and her sister talking.

Both of the women did look similar—smiles, eyes, expressions—but Tracey's hair was longer and she was probably a half inch shorter, unless it had something do with the sandals the ladies were wearing. But the differences would be negligible if one didn't see the women together like this. Would Hal get them mixed up? He didn't think so. He wasn't sure if they'd decide to test him though.

"If you're looking to see the differences between my two daughters, it's easy. Tracey loves blue. She wears it nearly all the time. Jessie loves fluorescent colors, hot pink and the like. Of course, being cougars, we can smell the difference easily enough. But from a distance like this, and upwind, it could be difficult. If you're worried about them trying to pull a fast one on you—you should be. That's how they've broken up with more guys over the years. Oh, and I know you said you're only here as a bodyguard and to investigate this case, but I know differently. You want to make a rancher out of my little girl."

Tracey turned to look at her father and frowned.

Hal laughed.

""If you can do that, you'll have my blessing. She was hell-bent on working for the agency, and I blame myself for it. I used to tell her about all the good cases where we saved wildlife. And so did my friends. Who would have the heart to tell a little girl about all the killings? There's so much more ugliness to this business. Now with this deadly situation, well, I want her out of it. But she's not going to listen to me."

Tracey shook her head as she joined Hal on the loveseat. He was glad he had sat there and not on the couch or a chair. "Stop telling Hal to marry me, Dad, so I'll quit my job. Which I have no intention of doing." She opened up the laptop.

Jack smiled and winked at Hal.

Hal smiled back. He liked her dad a lot too.

With the expanded view of the pictures, Tracey began to look for any clues. "Over fifteen-hundred photos in here. It's going to take forever."

Jessie joined them, bringing the tray of sandwiches, pickles, and chips. "Image 0523 is the beginning of the fifty or so photos I shot in the cave where you had the firefight."

"Thanks." Tracey ran the cursor down until she reached the first of the images and clicked on it.

Hal pressed against her arm, looking for anything also, mainly any hint of more ivory fragments, or the one she had found. But he couldn't help breathing in her scent, and feeling her warmth and softness. She suddenly turned to face him.

He smiled. He couldn't help that sharing the same space with her made him think of being with her earlier today by the waterfall, naked. And he couldn't help that she stirred his libido every time they were touching, even like this.

She rolled her eyes, but the thing of it was, his increased pheromones triggered an increase in hers, so the effect she had on him meant he affected her as well.

"There." He pointed at the screen.

She saw it too. A tip of a tusk mostly hidden in a burlap sack.

"Jessie, you took a picture of the stolen ivory tusks."

"No way." Jessie moved over to see the picture. "Omigod. That was the last picture I took. We were in a hurry to get out of there after I took a picture of the old mining cart, and then we heard a cave-in. I hadn't even had a chance to look in that direction. If you hadn't told me that this was a tusk, I would never have realized what it was. Our guide grabbed my arm and yanked at me to hurry through the tunnel to the shaft. We were covered with dirt and dust from the cave-in and choking on it before we made it to the shaft. The sound was deafening, and to tell you the truth, it was the last mine we went into. After that, I was really spooked about going into another."

Tracey scowled at her. "You said it was safe! That you had a guide who knew what he was doing!"

"Well, yeah. That was the only one in the fifty mines that we visited that we had any trouble in."

"What if these tusks were buried in the cave-in? Were you deeper in the mine?"

"Deeper than what? I don't know where you were exactly when you found the piece of ivory."

"Okay. We went down a shaft, then walked through a tunnel for about five-hundred feet and then down a second shaft."

Tracey studied the picture again. "We only went down one shaft. So either they chipped off a tusk when they went in to hide it. Or broke it off on the way out, which means they recovered their stolen ivory before the cave-in."

Melanie brought in a glass pitcher of a beverage to the coffee table that smelled of bourbon and mint. "Mint julep," she said. "Should we invite Albert in?"

"No," Jack said. "Jessie can take a sandwich and soda out to him. He's on strict guard duty."

Jessie got up and went to get Albert his dinner.

"Hey, Jessie, what about the ghost towns? We were at Anderson when my partner was killed."

Returning from the kitchen, Jessie had a baggie with a sandwich in it and a soda in hand. "There's a list of the images with locations right next to the laptop."

"Thanks. I love how organized you are."

"Have to be if I'm going to write about them. Be right back. Don't find any more clues about this until I return." Jessie headed outside.

Tracey got on the phone to her boss, while Hal opened up the first picture listed for Anderson. "I was looking at Jessie's pictures. The staff you have that are checking them over might have seen it already, but they might investigate and see if there was a cave-in after the second shaft." She explained in more detail what she saw in the photo and what had happened to her sister with the cave-in right after that.

"Nope. I'm not investigating this. Just sitting here visiting with Mom, Dad, Jessie, and Hal, having mint juleps and sandwiches, enjoying my family—like you said for me to do. If I get any other ideas, I'll be sure to run them by you."

She set her phone on the table and began to look at the pictures of the ghost town.

"What did he say about you investigating this further?" Hal was certain Mick knew her well enough to realize she wasn't leaving the case alone.

"He told me to have a nice visit."

Hal's phone rang and he quickly looked at the caller I.D, concerned it was Ted and there was some trouble back at the ranch. Instead, it was Mick. Hal rose from the loveseat and headed for the door. "Be right back," he said to the family. Tracey frowned at him.

He didn't want to hide anything from Tracey, but he didn't want to speak to Mick in front of the whole family. "Yeah? What's up?"

"Are you somewhere you can talk?"

"Uh, yeah, just a second." Hal walked outside and shut the door, but Jessie was still within cougar earshot.

After delivering the sandwich and soda to the retired Special Agent on house watch, Jessie turned and smiled as she headed back to the house and saw Hal on the phone speaking to Tracey's boss. "So what's up?"

"Just needed to take a call in private."

Jessie frowned at him. "You're not seeing another woman behind my sister's back, are you?"

He chuckled. "First, we just met. Second, you would have smelled another woman on me. Tracey would have smelled her first. So no."

"Okay. Just so you know, my dad and sister aren't the only two people in the family who know how to shoot. I don't only use a camera."

He smiled. "Don't think you have to worry about that. Tell Tracey I'll be there in a minute."

"All right." Jessie gave him a look like she meant what she said.

He liked that her sister was protective of her and not trying to make a play for him. It had happened before to him with another couple of sisters, and what a mess that had been.

When the front door closed, he glanced at the middle-aged man sitting in the sedan, who was watching him. Hal waved to him in greeting, and then said to his friend, "Yeah, Mick?"

"Four of my men were down in the tunnel where Tracey found the ivory fragment. I sent word to the man in charge topside. I have four men up there guarding the place. Anyway, he went down to tell the others the news. So we might have some word in a couple of hours about the cave-in."

"You think the men who shot at Tracey were trying to protect their ivory?"

"Could be. Not that she could have gotten it out if it was buried. But if they knew she'd gone in there and suspected that the ivory was there, they might have concluded that she would be reporting back to us about her find."

"So they thought to kill her and Ricky and dispose of their bodies. She's on administrative leave and was working the case without your approval. So she wasn't giving you any hint of what she was up to."

"Right. She hadn't told anyone. So she was the perfect target. No one would have ever known what happened to her if she hadn't contacted your dispatcher."

Hal heard a window to a room at the end of the house slide up. It had to be the room where Stan was playing the computer games because the game music was suddenly louder. And he wondered then, since the family had said he always came when the food was ready, why he hadn't left the game to eat sandwiches with them. But then again, if he was in the middle of a battle, some games wouldn't allow the gamer to save or pause the game.

Still, Hal listened to what was going on at the end of the house as Mick continued to talk to him concerning what he wanted Hal to do about Tracey and her family. But Hal didn't hear a word he was actually saying. Stan was no doubt just letting some cool, fresh air into the room. Then something that sounded like a screen being removed from that very same window caught his attention, and his curiosity. He moved toward the south side of the house, pulling his magnum from its holster.